


Through the Narrow Aisles

by Infinite_Monkeys



Series: All Our Yesterdays And Days To Come [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Canon-Typical Night Vale Weirdness, Community Building Exercises, Fluff, Gen, Kinda, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24374443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinite_Monkeys/pseuds/Infinite_Monkeys
Summary: An ordinary Tuesday in Night Vale.Featuring: The common cold, the even more common threat of citywide catastrophe, and what it means to be a part of a community.
Series: All Our Yesterdays And Days To Come [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1354483
Comments: 44
Kudos: 334





	Through the Narrow Aisles

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Here is a quick slice-of-life oneshot; has it distracted you from how long it's taking for the next installment to be finished? Good. 
> 
> This is set somewhere in between _Mostly Void, Partially Starts_ and _Out Where The Lights Are Blinding_. We shall see if I can wrangle it into the correct spot in the series for any new readers, but for anyone who's been along for this whole ride (ps I appreciate you!) and is wondering why events from the last few stories aren't referenced, that's why. 
> 
> Warnings for a pre-pandemic view of being sick; this was plotted out a while ago and I only now got it finished. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Loki woke up with a raw feeling in the back of his throat and the thought _oh no, not this again_. 

Logically, being on Midgard should have isolated him and his children from disease. They were not, after all, Midgardian, and there were hardly any Asgardians or Jotnar or other folk running around that should've been able to get them sick. They were perfectly isolated, an island of health in a world of weak mortal diseases. 

The common cold, however, didn't seem inclined to follow this logic. He'd blame the peculiar internal system of Night Vale with its oddities, but this was not the first time nor the only place this had happened. 

Now that he was awake, his body seemed determined to make him aware of all the complaints it had stored up for him while he slept. His entire body ached. His head, especially, but also his joints and his skin and his lungs and pretty much everything else. He'd love nothing more than to roll over and collapse and not move for a century, and if that had been an option available to him, he might have done it.

As it stood, though, his schedule had little room for rearrangement. Hela needed to go to scouts—she, as always, would avoid catching the virus that made him miserable. If he were not so glad of the fact, it would probably make him jealous. Her brothers may or may not be so lucky; he should take special care to keep to himself until he was certain he was no longer contagious. 

Even picturing to himself the way these next couple of days would necessarily play out made him want to groan. There was no option except to power though, no matter how his body had already started to turn traitor against him. Being sick as an individual was unpleasant, but being sick as a parent was _miserable_. 

He forced himself out of bed and to his feet, only for a wave of dizziness to wash over him at the sudden change in position and leave him swaying. 

He gritted his teeth and waited for it to pass before getting dressed. He chose looser, more comfortable clothes than he would usually wear and then made his way downstairs, gripping the banister hard enough that the wood creaked and threatened to splinter. 

Hela and Fenrir were already at the table eating cereal when he made it, which meant he was behind and would have hardly any time to pack their lunches. Hela glanced up at him as she held out a handful of cereal for Sleipnir to eat out of her palm—he tended to get distracted in the mornings, and she'd taken it on herself to make sure he ate _some_ breakfast—and frowned. 

“You look upset,” she said, sounding concerned in a disquietingly adult sort of way. “Is something wrong?” 

“Nothing,” he said quickly, and she relaxed a little. “I slept a bit longer than I meant to. Sandwiches will have to suffice for lunch today, unless you'd prefer the cafeteria?” 

She wrinkled her nose. “No thanks,” she said, “last week they tried to feed us live kangaroos. Only one kid actually tried to bite them, and he ended up in the hospital. Everyone else just went hungry and practiced hiding from angry kangaroos.” 

Now he frowned. “That's hardly acceptable. I'll bring it up at the next PTA meet.” 

“It probably won't change anything. The School Board is afraid of the lunch ladies.” 

He finished the first sandwich and slid it into a bag before starting on the second, for Fenrir. He added plenty of extra meat; he'd been hungry lately. Probably meant he was headed towards another growth spurt. “I shall have to make sure they are more afraid of me, then,” he said, and that won a small smile from Hela. 

“Papa...” 

“Don't worry,” he said. Sleipnir's sandwich next. No meat, plenty of bread and lettuce. Enough of each that calling it a sandwich was likely disingenuous. “I won't cause anyone permanent injury.” 

“I know,” she said, and sounded more sure than maybe she should. Her smile faded away the next moment, though, and she squinted at him. “Are you sure everything's okay?” 

He looked down and realized he had one hand planted on the counter to steady himself, and Jormungand's sandwich lay out half-made in front of him as he stared through it. “Absolutely certain,” he said, and straightened.

“We can eat at the cafeteria,” she said hesitantly. “If you need us to.”

“Not at all; I've already finished.” He slipped a piece of fruit into two of the bags and passed them out, holding himself carefully steady as he did so. 

Hela didn't look entirely convinced, but she took her lunch anyway. He thought she might say something else, but just then the traditional ear-splitting, birdlike shriek of the school bus rang through the streets, and within a moment his children were outside and on their way to school and the house fell quiet once more. 

He battled the urge to go back to bed and won; he had too much to do for him to be laying around. 

Without anyone around to notice or worry, he allowed himself a moment of slow breathing with his eyes squeezed shut before he dragged himself out the door. 

* * *

“Wow, you look terrible. Are you okay?” 

Loki grimaced as he slid into the opposite seat of the booth, Carlos still watching him with concern. “Charming,” he said. “I can see why Cecil is so infatuated.” 

Now it was Carlos' turn to grimace. “I'm going to forgive that because I'm assuming it's the death-warmed-over thing talking. Seriously, is everything okay? Because you're really pale. I mean, you're usually really pale but this is worse. Did you get a sunburn on opposite day?” 

Loki frowned, and used a quick glamor to at least hide whatever might be wrong with his coloration. “I did not,” he said. “I was rather busy preventing store employees from stealing my belongings and leaving behind paper currency in exchange.” 

“Okay, one, they did that to me too but I got weirdly a lot of money for my blender, and two, I know you're just using magic to hide whatever's going on so that you don't have to talk about it, I'm not stupid. I'm pretty smart, actually. Is there anything I can help with?” 

“Not unless Midgardian science has developed a cure for the rhinovirus,” he said, and Carlos grimaced in sympathy. A waitress approached with a cup of coffee, saw him, turned around, and re-appeared a minute later with a different mug. The liquid inside was dark black and had a texture. 

He wrapped his hands around it, took a small sip, and shuddered. 

“Unfortunately not,” Carlos said. “That's no fun though, I'm sorry.” 

He shrugged, taking another sip of whatever was in his cup. “It will pass.” With more effort than it would usually require, he reached deep into a dimensional pocket and came up with a startlingly large stack of books, then let them drop on the table. 

Carefully, though, to avoid bending the covers or worse, sloshing Carlos' coffee or his mystery drink. The Librarians would not be forgiving. 

Carlos' eyes predictably lit up at the stack. “Thank you,” he said, reaching for the book at the top and flipping it over to scan the back cover. 

“May I ask why you need so many books on plant growth and herbicides?” 

Carlos didn't look up from his perusal. “There's a strange weed outside the lab,” he said. “Or actually, it started out down by the Ralph's and they wanted us to figure out how to get rid of it, but now it's outside our window and blocking off most of our light. It's driving Kareem crazy. Anyhow, I want to know what makes it grow so fast, and also how to make it stop before our electric bill goes up.” 

“Ah.” He took another long sip of the mystery concoction, and it burned against his raw throat. 

“Although, if we could harness whatever's causing the unchecked growth, the results could be pretty spectacular. Could you imagine if we isolated the gene or genes responsible and were able to splice them into food crops? We'd be one step closer to solving...” 

Loki found his attention drifting away, slipping off the conversational thread like a foot sliding off an iced step. His blood felt strangely fast and pounded in his ears. 

He raised one finger in the air and managed to catch the waitress' attention, flagging her down. “Excuse me, Lydia,” he said, “but what exactly is in this drink?” 

“A whole lotta caffeine, honey,” she said, grinning at the sludge and at him. “Best hangover cure there is.” 

“I am not hungover,” he said, picking it up and eyeing it warily. When he tilted it, it ran slowly, like syrup. “I have a cold.”

“Best thing for that, too,” she insisted. “Will probably kill the virus right off. Kills about anything it doesn't cure.” 

“Reassuring,” he said. 

“Alright, well, you feel better now,” she said, and turned and sauntered off. 

When he looked back to Carlos, the man was watching him almost warily. “I can drive you home, if you need,” he offered. “The van is parked just outside. I can probably make room in the passenger seat, and if not the crates in the back should be alright to sit on.” 

“No,” he said, “thank you.” He considered the rest of his drink before swallowing it down in a final gulp. “I've much to do yet before today is finished.”

“Alright,” Carlos said, “let me know if you end up needing anything.” He sounded sincere, even, and probably was—Loki suspected the scientist might be incapable of insincerity. 

“I will,” Loki lied. 

* * *

Loki didn't sign up for the barn raising. 

No one did; community building activities were assigned via black envelopes that appeared in a person's mailbox, unlabeled except for an ominous rune inscribed on the front. Since the rune inscribed on the black envelope was also black, it was difficult to tell what shape it held, or whether they were all alike, or whether any meaning could be derived from the way the rune curved. 

The envelopes did not glow. They did something that was like the opposite of glowing, casting faint shadows where shadows would not otherwise have been. They smelled faintly of copper and vanilla. 

How the envelopes were delivered was a recurring topic of conversation during his and Carlos' talks over coffee. No one had ever seen them being delivered, and the mail delivery people were all still on extended vacation due to the post office being closed and, most likely, haunted. Another mystery to solve. Not as pressing as, for example, figuring out how to predict the movements of the randomly teleporting clock tower before it crushed something or someone important, but another mystery that would itch at his brain until it was resolved. 

Loki didn't sign up for the barn raising; some power, be it governmental or supernatural—or, most likely, both—had signed him up, and there was no getting out of it now. 

He showed up at the appointed time, standing awkwardly in the open field near, but not too near, many other people who were also awkwardly standing near, but not too near to him. 

Some of the people he knew, and others were strangers, but most fell somewhere in between, familiar faces he recognized but could not quite place. People whose superficial traits had created a superficial identity that existed in his mind that had not yet been overwritten by the deeper understanding that comes from experience. 

“Hey!” Loki spun to face the shout and immediately regretted it; the twisting motion set his head to spinning unpleasantly and his stomach twisted in response. “Hey,” John Peters said again, “think you could come over here and give me a hand with this rope? I'm not one much for knots; never was in scouts, and anyhow the arthritis in my fingers been acting up.” 

“What?” Loki stared, stupidly, for a second, until his crawling thoughts managed to catch the rest of the way up to the conversation. “I suppose,” he said, and took the length of rope that was held out.

“We need a good strong knot every few feet,” John Peters explained, waving a hand at intervals on the rope. “If we want to be able to get the barn off the ground once it's done, lots of people are going to have to pull together, and we don't want the rope slipping out of their hands.” 

Loki blinked, but his fingers went slowly, tentatively to work at making the proscribed knots. “Why would we want to lift the barn?” 

“To prove that we can, of course. Together.” The farmer winked. “We have everyone working hard, pulling together, to show that when we do, we can do whatever we put our heads to.” 

Loki started another knot. His fingers slipped, and he had to pull it out and re-tie it. “Even if that means raising up a barn that would be better left on the ground?” 

“Exactly.” John Peters lowered his voice, glancing over at the awkwardly mingling crowds as he did so, as though to make sure no one could hear them. “That's what I brought you over here to talk about, actually,” he said. “At these sort of things, we want everyone to participate. _Everyone_.” 

He bit back the urge to snap, settling for letting an irritated look creep across his face. “I'm here, am I not?” He lifted the rope, just a bit, as though to say _see, I'm already contributing_. 

The farmer raised his hands, half-shrug, half _yes, I see_. “That's not exactly what I meant,” he said. “Everyone has their own level of what they can contribute, and if it's only a little, well, that's all right. Better than all right, because those little bits add up to something great, all together, and that's exactly what we want to see here.” 

Loki felt his face flush. “Is there a reason you're telling this to me, specifically?” 

The farmer paused, looking him straight in the eyes with a sudden intensity that made him feel like shivering. Or perhaps he'd finally developed a fever; his skin felt hot, and while the desert air still felt hotter, an occasional chill would crawl over his skin like a static shock.

“I just want to make sure we understand one another. Sometimes,” John Peters said, “a member of our community might be able to pitch in quite a lot. Might be able to, say, pick up a barn on his lonesome. But those other contributions, they're important too, you see? It's important for the town, and the exercise, that everyone does their part. That everyone _gets_ to do their part.” 

Ah. So John Peters wasn't worried that Loki would slack off or couldn't assist. The opposite, actually—he was being asked not to put his full strength into the activity, to allow others their contributions.

Well enough. Holding back should be less of a challenge than usual, given the way he felt now. “Of course,” he said easily. “That is the point of the exercise, yes?” 

He tied the final knot, and John Peters slapped him across the back hard enough that he nearly stumbled. “You've got it,” he said as Loki scrambled to keep from dropping the rope. He handed it over, and John Peters looped it over one arm. 

“Say,” he said, “you all right? You're looking a bit like life's a stampede that just ran straight over the top of you.”

“I'm perfectly fine,” Loki said, and took his place back at the edges of the barn-raising crowd. He moved without looking back, not giving the farmer the chance to catch his eye or ask further questions.

The barn itself went up quickly. Former scouts put their carpentry expertise to good use and made quick work of the tough parts of the job, directing and assisting the rest of them as needed. Loki knew enough of what he was doing to keep up but not so much he felt he needed to join the ranks of the project managers, which was well enough. He could keep mostly to himself, the need to focus a thin insulation against focusing too much on the aches and discomforts that persisted. 

The job they had given him was fairly unobjectionable; simple enough not to require too much of his muddled brain, but detailed enough to require his full attention. They brought him bits of wood marked in pencil, wooden slats and the ends of beams and so forth, and tasked him with cutting smoothly along the markings so the pieces could be fitted together by the next participants in their makeshift assembly. 

One of the former scouts, a tall man with orange hair and a boyish smattering of freckles, seemed disappointed when he declined his offer of a chainsaw and instead cut the wood by hand. 

Even past the distracting throbbing in his head, the act of cutting the wood held a certain amount of nostalgia. It brought him back to a younger, simpler time, of being a child exploring various crafts armed with more curiosity and determination than skill. Perhaps, if he were truly to settle here, he could begin taking up certain projects again. Furniture, for one thing; the weak Midgardian constructions his house came furnished with could not withstand even a bit of gentle use from his larger children, and the various replacements he'd bought from the local pawn shop hadn't fared much better. 

Something to consider, at least. 

Somehow, whether by literal or figurative miracle, he still had all his fingers by the time the last piece of wood had been cut. So, it seemed, did everyone else, and by communal effort they lifted the final piece in place and secured it. All in all, it had taken impressively little time given the primitive tools and lack of magic at their collective disposal.

The busy activity surrounding the building did not stop once it was complete; in fact, it barely slowed. Instead, people set to attaching the knotted ropes to various support beams, and a distant rumble materialized into a huge crane that came to rest next to the structure, its long arm hanging directly over the barn's roof. Two young women climbed to the top and passed the ends of the ropes to a third, who hung from the crane by her legs and looped them through before passing them back. 

Finding a place at the ropes was almost difficult. People didn't so much jostle each other as swarm into position, and he managed to steal an empty spot near the back. 

The chatter that had built up went quiet as everyone started to pull. Loki gripped the rope mostly for show; that and to steady his hands, which had started to shake a bit somewhere along the way. Probably from all the time spent standing in the desert sun. 

He still didn't do terribly well in the heat, truth be told, and while he could usually compensate with a bit of magic he hadn't thought to. Hadn't thought to, or maybe he'd just been tired, or perhaps because it'd still been in the cooler part of the morning when they started, the heat had snuck up on him.

No matter; when he tightened his grip, the shaking stopped, even if small black dots started floating at the edge of his vision. 

He resolved to lean a bit of weight on the rope rather than actively pulling, following John Peters' request and with the added bonus of easing the task of staying upright. Summoning two birds with one bloodstone, as the Midgardians would say. The barn ever so slowly began to rise. 

The wood creaked ominously as it rose into the air, flexing a bit in the places where the ropes attached, but it was solid and it held. He could feel the people around him holding their collective breath as it rose inch by inch, could feel himself holding his own breath in anticipation even as it made his vision swim. 

Finally, it came to a stop, hanging several feet in the air and swaying slightly in the warm desert breeze. 

A child who would have been about three hundred on Asgard dropped down and peered underneath on hands and knees before giving a thumbs up; the momentum reversed, the building lowered, and as soon as it settled safely back on the ground the crowd exploded in a wild, frantic mess of cheering and clapping and gleeful screaming. 

It seemed a bit much, especially for an exercise so pointless—the barn didn't actually _need_ lifting, after all—but it would be just as pointless to grudge them their celebration. 

Loki staggered a bit at the release of the tension, but everyone's attention was focused elsewhere, distracted by their collective accomplishment, and he managed to play it off. 

“There's lemonade and fried grasshoppers back at the main house,” John Peters announced. No one responded, but one or two at a time people started ambling in that direction, some lost in the friendly conversation that springs up once a task is ended, some in tired but satisfied silence. 

Loki hung back, leaning against one wall of the newly-grounded barn, and when he pushed off he started walking in the direction opposite the flow of traffic. 

“You aren't sticking around?” He froze, but there was no accusation in the farmer's voice. No curiosity, either, but perhaps a hint of concern. “Lemonade's good for the soul. At least, that's what the AAMC says in their latest article ranking foods based on their spiritual merit.”

“Can't, I'm afraid,” he said. “I'm scheduled to join Hela's scout troop in fifteen minutes. One of this week's parent chaperones. I wouldn't want to be late.”

“Ah,” John Peters said. “Wouldn't want that. Take care?” 

“You do the same,” he managed. It might even have been dignified if he hadn't needed to cough into his sleeve after the last word. 

He felt the sharp, assessing gaze on his back as he stumbled off, and it lasted almost until he made it out of sight.

* * *

The outside of the house looked very much like the outside of all the houses around it. So much so that Loki started to worry he'd gone to the wrong one. The house numbers and lawn gnome characteristics matched the ones he remembered being given, but his head also felt more like a skull stuffed with rubber and cotton than a reliable way of storing information. 

He moved back to the door and considered knocking again when an ominous white van, unmarked except for a few sigils scrawled in what looked like blood, pulled around the corner. It stopped by the curb and he huffed a small sigh of relief. 

Miss Camila climbed out of the front seat as scouts poured from the back. They moved quickly and slowly in the way of children with too much energy and too little space to express it, tripping over themselves and each other through lack of organization. The sight brought a smile to his lips despite the pounding in his head. 

Miss Camila, by contrast, moved purposefully, brushing past him to unlock the door he'd been knocking at. He couldn't remember at the moment if she was a scout leader or simply another parent volunteer who'd been in scouts herself, but he did know that one of the children struggling out of the tangle of bodies in the back of the van was hers. 

“Sorry I'm late,” she said, “there was this huge plant blocking the road. I had to drive a bit out of the way to find a way around it.” 

“Hmm,” he said, and nodded in a way he hoped seemed understanding. Children started to pour past them and into the house, and he stepped out of the way to let the wave pass. 

Hela smiled and waved when she caught sight of him, deep in conversation with another girl about the Midgardian equivalent of her own age. He smiled and nodded in return as she passed. 

“Did you get the email with today's schedule?” 

It took him a second longer than it should have to realize the words were directed at him. He shook his head. “I don't have an email address.” 

The slight frown of disapproval that elicited was definitely not just in his imagination, but he refused to care. He could be reached via astral projection or carrier pigeon, or, if one felt like braving the double inconvenience of the post office being closed and haunted and his house not having an address as it did not technically exist, by way of regular mail. Anyone truly willing to put in the effort could reach him; making the process of demanding his attention easier seemed like a way to ensure that more people did so, and did so lightly over small or imagined concerns. 

“That's right,” she said, “You and the Glow Cloud. All hail.”

“All hail.” 

“Anyway,” she continued, “today we're doing educational ghost stories. If you didn't get the email, though, I don't suppose you have any prepared?” She looked hopeful but also resigned, as though the question were merely a formality to be gotten out of the way before she could express her disappointment. 

He shook his head. “It was common,” he began, and then hesitated. He had not called Asgard by name to any beside his own children in a long while, and had no intention of starting now. Calling the place his home would be worse; it hadn't been that for a long time, if it ever truly was. “It was common where I am from to have some measure of proficiency in storytelling, and a fair number of tales remembered and ready for telling,” he finished, attempting to smooth over the slight pause. “It will not be a problem.”

She gave him a deeply relieved look, so he added “I am actually particularly skilled in that art. Storytelling was rather a specialty of mine.”

“Great!” For the first time that day, her smile looked genuine. “I'll let you handle the stories then, while I put together some snacks.” 

He nodded, and it was settled. 

The children quieted as they entered, a hush of anticipation rather than the intimidation with which many Asgardian children of equivalent ages regarded their lesson masters. 

Loki picked his way over to the living room while Miss Camila slipped into the kitchen, visible over the half-wall that separated the two. One wall stood bare of furniture and he leaned against it, doing his best to make the motion seem casual. Scouts gathered around in a semicircle, sitting with crossed legs and serious expressions. Hela sat somewhere near the back, and he met her eyes and winked before he began to weave the first tale. 

“Our tale begins with a man known as Grettir the strong,” he began, adopting a storyteller's cadence. He was tempted to simply tell a straightforward story with words alone, but Hela would note the absence of the illusions he usually wove along with the tales. So he gritted his teeth and called on his magic, for the first time that day, to summon up an image to go with the words. 

The amount of effort the simple task required nearly staggered him. He knew the story by heart, and still it took an effort to hold his train of thought and keep the words progressing without interruption. The images flickered, just barely, and he dug his fingernails into his palms in hope the sharp sensation would help clear his head. 

By the time the ghost, Glam, made an appearance, his vision was starting to swim, blurring in a way he hoped wasn't reflected in the illusions themselves. 

He leaned back against the wall without meaning to, and his eyes slipped shut as a wave of hot dizziness washed over him. The fuzz in his head ate into his concentration, and he felt rather than saw the illusions from the story fizzle and die. 

“But what happens next?” He opened his eyes again, and the little boy who had spoken frowned at him. 

Miss Camila shot him a worried look, then stepped forward with a plastered-on smile. “This is a community storytelling exercise,” she said smoothly. “Since stories belong to our collective unconscious and should not be controlled by any single individual, we're going to take turns telling what happens next. Spencer, why don't you take the next turn?”

The boy looked suspiciously from Miss Camila to Loki, but evidently decided they were serious and started adding onto the tale. Loki caught something outlandish and sudden about robots before his attention floated off into the cloudy haze and Miss Camila pulled him aside. 

“Are you all right?” she asked in a low voice. At the edge of the group of children, Hela tilted her head, clearly eavesdropping. Obvious and unsubtle. He'd have to teach her better, show her how to feign interest in something across the room or even carry on another conversation while secretly listening. Then he laughed at the absurdity of this, at him being less concerned that his daughter felt the need to spy on him than that she'd done it poorly, at how different it was from the reaction one expected from parents. He didn't know if it was humorous, exactly, yet still he laughed. 

“Luke? You're starting to worry me.” Miss Camilla. Right. She'd asked a question, hadn't she? And he'd allowed himself to be distracted. How rude. 

“I'm entirely fine,” he insisted, then squeezed his eyes shut as the world twisted sideways and dipped before it righted itself. 

“Right.” The sharp disbelief in her voice should probably have been insulting, but he couldn't quite muster up the energy to care. 

“I am,” he insisted. The room tilted again, and one hand shot out to steady himself on the counter, slapping down more sharply than he'd intended. This time, it took a few seconds longer to tip back upright.

For a moment, he worried that he might faint right there, collapse with no warning right in front of a house full of children. His blood pounded through his ears, drummed and shushed in a way that felt distant and outside of his body. The world darkened, going dim.

Only…he took a deep breath and forced himself by power of will to steady, and the sound remained, bumping and clubbing and whispering and outside of himself. The world stayed dim. 

He blinked, and gradually a few details filtered in and started to fit themselves together. Something tangled and green twisted across the windows of the house, blocking out the sunlight filtering in from outside. The something moved, slowly enough that it seemed almost a trick of the eyes, but still visibly scraping and bumping and squeezing. 

A plant. _The_ plant, the one Carlos had been searching for a way to stop, large and threatening and here outside this house that contained his child and others. 

One more deep breath and he pushed himself back fully to his feet, gathering what reserves remained to him, galvanized by adrenaline and necessity. 

“Stay in the house,” he said, and if it came out a bit hoarse the words were also steady. 

“You aren't going out there?” 

Miss Camila sounded worried, but Loki didn't look at her; he looked instead at Hela, back with the other children. His daughter did still look concerned, but not doubtful. Somehow, after everything, she still trusted him to manage things, and he refused to betray that trust. 

“Stay inside,” he said again, and stumbled his way to the door. 

It took some pushing and shoving to make his way outside through the curtain of vines that covered the building’s front, and he stumbled back to a distance where he could get a good look at the advancing plant.

It was worse, far worse than he had imagined. Stalks and leaves and vines were _everywhere_ , slithering along the ground and climbing up mailboxes and walls and cars and other structures with mindless vegetative diligence. Bringing it back under control would take a staggering amount of energy, enough to exhaust him on a regular day. Today, feeling as he was, he didn't think he could manage it. 

He didn't have a choice. 

He lifted his hands, closing his eyes and fighting not to sway as he gathered himself for the first strike of what looked to be a long and hopeless battle. 

“Hey.” 

The voice shattered his hard-fought concentration like a dropped mirror, and he grimaced to himself before turning to look. 

“Hey,” Carlos said again, “what're you doing?” 

Loki looked, then shook his head to clear it, but when he looked again the sight before him hadn't changed. Carlos wore a pair of goggles and a paper mask and long, purple gloves, and he carried some kind of hose with a sprayer-nozzle on the end. “The plants,” Loki said fuzzily. “I am—they are a threat, and I am going to take care of them.” 

“You look more like you're going to fall over,” Carlos said. “You should probably sit down. We've got this one.” 

At the “we” he gestured behind him, and another figure, similarly outfitted, waved cheerfully. Lydia, the waitress from the diner. 

As if to demonstrate, he sprayed a nearby stalk of the plant with the hose and nozzle. It collapsed almost in slow motion, leaves whispering together in a silent scream.

“What?” Loki asked. He did sit down, but couldn't remember having decided to do so. “How?”

“Caffeine is a potent herbicide,” the scientist said. “Turns out that's part of the reason some plants make it; they poison the ground so that nothing else can grow. I figured that an insanely aggressive weeds could be killed by an insane amount of caffeine, and, well, Lydia's hangover cure is pretty much just that.” 

Lydia beamed. “I told you,” she said. “It cures about anything it doesn't kill, and vice versa.”

Carlos continued spraying. The plants wilted and dropped almost instantly, melting into sad puddles on the ground in a way that struck Loki as unnatural and melodramatic. 

Loki sat. It was difficult to tell how much time passed as he sat, as time and his head and his thoughts all began to swim together into a hazy half-remembered time of sitting and breathing and, somehow, not having to fight enormous killer plants. 

When Carlos once again appeared in his field of vision, waving to get his attention, the mask and sprayer and purple gloves were gone. Gone, too, was the plant, leaving behind only a pulp of leaves and stalk and not entirely natural-looking goo. 

“I said,” Carlos said slowly, as though he were repeating himself, “do you think you'll take that ride home now?” 

Loki hummed. “No, thank you,” he managed, sounding the words out carefully.

“Because the van is a ways away from here,” Carlos continued as if he hadn't heard, “but John Peters, y'know, the farmer, was passing by in his pickup and he's offering.”

“Where's Hela?” he asked, suddenly aware that she'd been here and he couldn't see her now.

“Probably back home already. Camila was dropping everyone off.” 

“Oh.” She'd probably be fine until he got home, then; there was one more thing he had to do today before he could return, vague, unremembered. He searched his memory. “I have to…school finance meeting,” he said as the memory finally dredged its way to the surface. He'd joined because while the school did not have a proper treasury in the sense that he was used to, they did have resources and he had opinions on how those resources were managed. They would be expecting him. “They'll be expecting me.” 

“I already texted Cecil,” Carlos said. “He said he could fill in for tonight. Was kind of looking forward to it, in fact. It's been a while since he was able to join a really long, vicious argument, and he always enjoys them, for the sport. Here.” The scientist held out a bottle, blue metal with a diagram of a water molecule stuck to the side as a sticker. “You should go home and rest,” he said sincerely.

“I can look after myself,” he said stubbornly, passing the bottle of water from one hand to the other without opening it. “See to my own affairs.” 

“I know you can,” the scientist said, and for all that Loki searched, he couldn't find a hint of anything patronizing in his tone. “But sometimes, even our own well-being can be a big thing for one person to carry. Sometimes a lot of people can help a little, and that adds up and makes everything easier. That's part of what it means to share space and bonds with other people, to be part of a town, or community, or whatever other unit of togetherness you prefer to describe.” 

The speech ran together in his muzzled brain, but the pattern, the shape of it looked familiar. The idea of a massive effort being replaced by many small ones, critical contributions from a team with a common goal. A project that benefited those contributing as well as the beneficiary. “Are you trying to say I'm like a barn raising?” he tried, and if the idea didn't quite come out right, Carlos seemed to mostly understand. He shrugged. 

“I mean, I guess, if that's how you want to think about it,” he said. “All I mean is that it's as okay to get help as it is to give it. Community is a give and take. Most things are.”

“Ah,” he said, mostly because he didn't have the words to say more. The passionate simplicity of the words left him speechless, or maybe that was the fever leaving his throat dry. 

“So you'll take that ride?” He sounded almost hopeful, ridiculously, as though he had a stake in the outcome and was not acting out of misplaced concern. 

“I think I will,” he said, and Carlos smiled encouragingly in a way that almost made him change his mind. 

* * *

Maybe he dozed on the ride back, maybe it was only that his perception of time was still warped, but it seemed to him that almost as soon as he stepped up into the cab of the truck he was stepping out again outside his own home. He must have sat long enough to do himself some good, though, because while his head and bones continued to ache with exhaustion, his legs held him up fine, no longer strange and insubstantial. 

John Peters waved as he drove off, but he didn't leave him alone; someone else stood on his porch, watching him as he made his way back to the house. He held the door and she followed him inside.

“I invited Hela and the boys over for dinner,” Josie said. “They're more than welcome to stay the night. I've a couple of extra bedrooms, and you know the Erikas never sleep.”

His first instinct was to reject the offer; after everything they'd been through, he didn't care for the idea of leaving his children in the care of another, and he cared even less to impose on her hospitality. They were friends, yes, but he'd been burned too often to easily put himself in debt to a friend. 

But the bone-deep weariness that dragged at him made its own arguments, and there was also the matter of how being far away from him meant less of a chance for his children to catch whatever disease left him this miserable. Josie had also shown herself trustworthy at every opportunity, and the angels, while strange and discomforting, also made her house one of the safest places in their little town.

“All right,” he said at last, and she nodded like the thing had been settled all along, and would have been no matter what he had said.

She held a small pot in both hands, and she hoisted it onto the counter when they reached the kitchen. “Soup,” she said, gesturing with one hand as she lifted the lid a bit with the other. “I made it myself. It's an old family recipe, and the best thing in the world for colds.”

Loki sniffled, resisting the disgusting urge to wipe his nose on his sleeve. “What makes you—how did you even know?” 

“The angels know lots of things. Don't you worry your head about it.” She looked at him rather like she'd like to pat him on the head, but given he was a good two feet taller than her, she patted his arm instead. “Rest up.”

The next time he looked up, she was gone. He'd have liked to assume she possessed a shocking amount of stealth for such an elderly lady, or perhaps blamed the angels, but he suspected it was only more time lost to the haze in his mind. 

The soup made its way into the refrigerator, and he made his way upstairs by pure strength of will. The cool water of the shower felt blessedly cool against his fevered skin, and then time skipped again and he was falling into bed, giving up the fight with gravity he'd been losing by inches for the last few hours. 

The last thought that drifted through his mind before he lost himself to oblivion was to wonder to himself why so many people had bothered to help him even when he could've made it through without, had shown up with soup and transportation and unearned support.

The answer came to him just as quickly, there in the hazy grey warmth between waking and sleep. These people, these strange and kind people he found himself among, helped him simply because they could. Easily and impulsively, just as they lifted barns and told stories and fought off hazardous malevolent plants. 

Were he more awake, he doubtless would have been worried, gratitude swallowed in concerns about wearing out favors and incurring debts he could not repay, especially not when this sort of easy kindness was not in his own nature. As it was, though, he drifted in the easy security that came with the realization that whatever problems the next day held, he would, improbably, not need to face them alone. 

That reassurance was enough to tip him over the edge, and he fell into a deep, dreamless, restful sleep. 

* * *

He woke slowly the next morning, and he could tell through his closed eyelids that the sun had already risen. 

“When I open my eyes,” he said, and his voice wasn't near as strained as the day before, “there will be no one in my room for me to throw out the window.” 

“We have hot tea,” said the agent of the Sheriff's Secret Police.

He stuck one hand out from under the covers and took the mug, eyes still closed. “When I open my eyes,” he repeated, “there will be no one in my room for me to throw out the window.” 

“Gotcha,” said the same voice, and a faint set of footsteps trailed out of the room. 

“Feeling better?” the second police agent asked. 

“Much,” he said. “Though I was serious about the defenestration.” 

“Ah,” the second agent said, and then he followed his fellow in retreat. 

Loki sat up, and stretched, and took a sip of the tea. It had a bit of honey, just enough to cut the bitterness. 

In a short while he would need to do many things: to collect his children, ask Cecil for notes on the school finance meeting, apologize formally to Miss Camila for nearly passing out in her living room. 

But for this one moment he rested, indulgently, perhaps even recklessly, holding on to the brief moment of filtered sunlight and sweetened tea and kindness and rest for as long as it would last. 

  
  
  



End file.
